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July 31, 2008

Ep. 60: STEPHAN MARTINIERE - The Gentleman Artist

Some people are born to do it all. Or at least it seems that way! They can do so many things well, it comes off more like destiny than determination. Artist and illustrator Stephan Martiniere is certainly perceived to be one of those people. In his 25 year career, he's had his hand in nearly everything—animation, illustration, comics, TV, film and he's currently the Creative Visual Director for Midway Games Chicago. So you can add video games to his resume too (yeah, yeah, I know that's not exactly everything, but it's damn close).

Our introduction to this uber-talent's work came through very familiar channels. We're Spectrum guys and Stephan's work has been featured in the anthology several years in a row now. All of it awesome and most of it from his book covers for Tor Books (good lookin' out, Ms. Gallo). When you see the man's images, brace yourself, because you'll lose your mind—seriously! His dazzling city and spacescapes, and his far off worlds are so fantastic yet so familiar all at the same time. It may indeed be science fiction, but man, does it feel real to geeks like us!

Speaking of real, the accolades he's received from industry peers is absolutely real. Spectrum, Hugo, Thea, Chesley and many others have all honored Martiniere over the years with awards for his artistic excellence. They all know he's the mack man. And we do too, for that matter! That's why we shot him an email asking him to slum a bit by coming on the show for an interview. He accepted the invitation saying something about "never having done a podcast before and it might be fun." [Note to audience: We have no proof, but we suspect ours may be his last podcast—so listen in while you can!]

The conversation with him covers much, but just like the intro to this text, not everything. Dwight and I thought we had the best chance of not embarrassing ourselves by keeping it simple. So we got some stories from Stephan's art school days, a little concept design and illustration talk in there, nerded out on video games for a minute, and ended it with the good stuff. What is the good stuff, you ask? Hmm..? Well, you'll have to tune in and find out, now won't you?

**For this episode with the gentleman artist, we played a snippet of Sting's Send Your Love. The lyric about sending your love into the distant dawn just seemed so appropriate. [Also, as is my luck (Swain), I was very sick while recording this and you can hear me gently hacking in the background—my apologies!]